MAUMEE, Ohio — For years, the City of Maumee pumped untreated sewage into the Maumee River during heavy rains – a practice that violates the federal Clean Water Act. But newly obtained records document years of internal awareness about the practice – offering new insight into who knew about the discharges and when.
State investigators interviewed more than a dozen current and former city employees, some under oath, as part of a joint criminal inquiry by the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation and the Environmental Protection Agency’s Criminal Investigation Division. Those records, obtained by WTOL 11, show that the city’s illegal sewage discharge practices spanned decades and were well known within the city’s public works and sewer departments. Though the investigation was run by the criminal investigation division, no criminal charges were brought.
But as public attention mounted in 2020 and 2021, key decision-makers at the top of the city’s government – including former Mayor Richard Carr – repeatedly claimed they either didn’t know the sewage dumping was happening or didn’t understand it was illegal…